IELTS Advice: it's fine to use my ideas

If you use words, phrases or sentences from this website or from my ebook, will the examiner know that you have copied me, and therefore consider part of your answer to be memorised?

The answer is no! You can, and you should, use the language that you find on this site. If you can't use the language that a teacher gives you, how are you expected to learn English?

For example, look at the following sentence from my most recent essay:

"Students may not have the opportunity to engage face-to-face with their teachers."

It would be fine to use a word (e.g. engage) or a phrase (e.g. the opportunity to engage face-to-face) from this sentence. You can even use the whole sentence, as long as it's relevant to the question that you have been asked.

So what do examiners consider to be "memorised language"? I'll explain that in tomorrow's lesson.

Comments

[Nam Anh]

Thank you very much, Teacher Simon. I think that the way you put words together is very beautiful <3 <3 and I always try to memorise your phrases by imagining the context they illustrate! I find that way easy to feel the phrases and remember them^.^

[Nam Anh]

I hope you have a nice weekend!

[L]

Excellent lesson! Simon, thank you so much for your effort to teach us very valuable lessons. I will take IELTS test in about a week. I am hoping for the best!

My regards

[Kareem El-Sayed]

Thanks

[vicky vaghela]

Hiii sir, someone say that u cannot use idioms in weiting task 2.Is that true or false?

[Lana]

This is what we want to learn,
Thank you sooo much

[sanba06c]

Yes, I totally with you, Simon. Such words are good to learn."Memorized words", in contrast, means that you rote-learn the whole sentence or you fail to put it in the proper context. So, it's better for us to study just phrases rather rather full sentences and try to use them appropriately, not like a kind of mechanism.

[Simon]

Thanks guys, I'm glad you found this advice useful.